


Revelation John

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Catholic Bucky Barnes, Catholic Steve Rogers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-23 00:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18538753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: Hidden under ice, on opposite sides of the globe, two men are snaked through with a cold kind of slumber, vicious and one that does not take to waking easily.If they were awake, these men-- the keepers of so many memorized verses from countless mornings spent at Sunday school-- they might think of Matthew, chapter nine, when a father whose daughter has died comes to Jesus and asks his help, and how, before healing her body, Jesus says to the mourners around the body “Go away. The girl is not dead, but asleep.”





	Revelation John

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So as you might have guessed from the tags, this fic is fairly religion-heavy. It's, honestly, pretty religion-centric. I know it's a divisive subject, but it's something that I've wanted to write for a while and that I feel is important to share, even if only one person cares about it in the end lol. 
> 
> I know religion can be triggering for people, so I really want to stress the 'don't like, don't read' angle here. 
> 
> At the end of all that, I just want to say I hope you all enjoy!

Steve takes a moment, before they jump on the train. He grabs Bucky’s dogtag, like he does. Closest thing he’s got a rosary, he says. “Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.” 

Bucky looks at him and grins, sharp. “And we are the meanest motherfucker’s in that valley. Amen.”

~*~

(Steve takes a moment, looking towards the ice he’s about to crash into. He thinks about the explosives in the back, and he thinks about the autopilot sequence he could input, if he wanted to. 

Then he thinks about Bucky, about reaching out for the person he loved most in the world, and not having got there in time. He thinks of having Bucky, and letting him go. 

There’s wetness on his cheeks, and a whimper from his mouth as he bows his head, and prays. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” The wind roars, the blue sea gets closer, closer, closer-- “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life--” He’s only seconds away now, and he knows he’s never going back. He barely gasps out a plea for forgiveness before he loses consciousness completely-- “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” 

It would be a lie to say it wasn’t a comfort.)

~*~

Hidden under ice, on opposite sides of the globe, two men are snaked through with a cold kind of slumber, vicious and one that does not take to waking easily. 

If they were awake, these men-- the keepers of so many memorized verses from countless mornings spent at Sunday school-- they might think of Matthew, chapter nine, when a father whose daughter has died comes to Jesus and asks his help, and how, before healing her body, Jesus says to the mourners around the body “Go away. The girl is not dead, but asleep.”

~*~

Sometimes, Bucky wakes up with a start and a sudden gasp, grenades and silent bullets ringing in his ears, orders in Russian shouted in snarls and phantom hands pushing him around and plunging syringes into his veins. His whole body is wrung taught as a rope, partially out of terror and partially because not long ago that had been his natural state of being. But only a few seconds later will he begin to come back to himself, back to reality. Reality is the warm bed he’s in that’s much too cosy to leave, reality is Steve sprawled out beside him, and one of the dogs sleeping by the bedroom door. Reality is much kinder to him, much more gentle than the canyons in his mind. Grenades, bullets and manhandling are replaced with the steady stream of Brooklyn traffic and the chirp of birds, and the dark he’d felt so stuck in is broken open with brilliant, bright light from the window. The sun peeking over the mountains, always there and never far from reach. Much like hope, Bucky supposes. Maybe like faith. 

~*~

He comes back to himself slowly, like a flower blooming in spring sun, each petal a trial and error, wilting and being reborn and recast in a continuous cycle. 

(“Get that one.” “With the peaches? You ever had peaches?” “No.” A defiant tilt of his head. “But I will.” And shortly thereafter, “Fucking _hell_ Steve why did you let me get the one with _peaches.”_ )

He remembers that he likes coffee and not tea, and when it’s black enough without sugar or milk, and slightly burnt, he could close his eyes and swear he was back in Base Camp in the 1940s. He likes apples and not bananas, and fruit he has to bite and chew that differ so vastly from the sludge Hydra would feed him (if at all). He likes porridge, even though Americans call it _oatmeal_ , and likes it made with fresh milk that Steve picks up from a farmer’s market. He loves reading, especially the stuff that JR fella came out with after _The Hobbit_ , and he likes watching Steve as they work through the Disney series, because if it’s just dark enough outside it reminds him of the first time he dragged him to Snow White at the pictures, and then got kicked out for describing the colours. 

(He remembers that he loved Steve, but was always too afraid to say, and he knows for fact that he loves him now and will always love him come what may, and he’s still afraid to say it but it’s not quite as daunting as it once was.)

He likes to run more than work out, especially with Steve beside him. And then one Sunday morning, Steve makes him remember something he’d completely forgotten. 

They’re in the kitchen, and Steve is humming something while he waits for his Ma’s stew to come to the boil, and--

Bucky used to love to sing. 

He remembers this, suddenly, as Steve sits down opposite him for dinner, and suddenly they’re barely nineteen and he’s making his mother’s casserole for Steve and loudly proclaiming “Oh, the Lord’s been good to me, and so I thank the Lord. For giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and my Stevie G. The Lord’s been good to me--”

Steve’s voice, still hoarse from coughing, protesting “They’re not the _words_ \--”, and Bucky, laughing and singing over him “Thank-you Jesus, A-men.”

He’s brought violently back to the present by the clatter of a fork to the floor, and Steve’s colourful curse. 

“I used to sing to you,” Bucky says absently. It’s half question, half statement.

Steve slowly looks up to him, blinking once, twice. He licks stew off of his thumb. “Yeah,” he answers eventually, loud and heavy in the room. “You loved it. I could never shut you up.”

“I--” Bucky frowns, rubbing his forehead and screwing his eyes shut. “Steve, was I religious? Outside of mass?”

“Do you not remember?” Steve asks quietly. 

“I can’t-- I don’t-- Was I?”

“I… Well, if you were having any crises of faith, you never told me. It always looked like it, yeah. You were… You loved it. I think.”

Bitter and vile-tasting gall invades the back of his throat, his stomach sick with the thought of loving a god that would cast him down into the pits of hell. He remembers Matthew twenty-two, and the descriptions of chains and binds and weeping. He can see himself, there, in a basement in Serbia, and god nowhere to be found. He watches in his memory as his past self sings a song of praise for a cruel and unloving tyrant. 

He watches as he sings, in his army greens, with happy tears in his eyes, the doxology to his day-old niece, and he hates himself in that moment. 

~*~

“How do you still believe?” Bucky asks Steve, lying side by side in bed. He’s half-lying on top of steve, one arm spanned across his neck and the other tracing the veins in the other man’s neck, up and down and up and down, feeling the palpable life beneath the skin. 

Steve snorts. “I’m no saint. I walked away from God too, y’know.”

“Why?” Bucky asks. “Because they took away your damn pin-up girls?”

Steve doesn’t laugh at the joke. Instead, he frowns, and looks at Bucky, their eyes meeting. “Because He took you. Again.” He reaches for Bucky’s hand, bringing it up to his mouth and kissing it. His eyes shutter closed as he takes one breath, then two. Like he needs to remind himself that Bucky is really here. It’s not uncommon, for either of them. Bucky kisses him in the divot where his neck meets his chest, trying to convey too much for words. That he’s here, and he’s safe. It’s not something easily believed, not when you live in a world that seems to be at pains to separate you, a world that has aliens that drop from the sky and constantly defies natural laws each passing day. 

“I didn’t want to talk to God,” Steve explains. “And I didn’t, for a long time… but I don’t 

think God left me, or I left God. I never felt that way. I think we just got in a fight.”

“You believed, once I came back?”

“No,” Steve answers calmly, brushing away some stray hair from Bucky’s eyes. “It started when I visited Ma’s grave. Then, y’know, _yours._ I can’t describe it. I can’t remember it. I just know that one night, after we’d saved this building from some kraken-type thing, I was looking up at the stars, and without thinking I thought ‘thank God those people were all okay’. And I looked up, and I just knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was the instrument, and not the hand.”

Bucky is quiet. “That’s what I was. At Hydra.”

Steve’s frown deepens, greif colouring the lines it makes on his forehead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But I think it’s different.”

“How so?”

“It’s love, Bucky. It’s love.”

“Where was the love in taking me from you?” Bucky asks, feeling more upset by the minute as it grows like a well in his chest. “Where was the love in making me a weapon? Where’s the love in bringing us back together, and sticking us horribly out of time? Where’s the love in any of that, Stevie?”

Steve reaches up and with his thumb, swipes gently at Bucky’s eye. It’s only when it comes away wet that Bucky realises he’s crying. “I wish I knew, sweet.” He brings his forehead to rest against Bucky’s, and they lie there, Steve comforting him like a child and whispering soothings in his ear, rubbing his back. 

“Don’t you think maybe this was a gift?” Steve says, carefully, after a while, when Bucky’s calmed down. “Our time together, a gift?” The scowl on his face answers the question for him. “It’s okay if you don’t believe, Buck.”

“Elohim, Elohim. My God, why have you forsaken me?’ That’s what Job said, isn’t it?” Bucky asks. Steve nods. “What the hell did he get for it, Steve? Ten replacement children? Severe PTSD?” Bucky sighs, suddenly bone-tired. “I don’t not believe, Steve… I don’t think God’s dead, Steve. I just hate him so much I was he was.”

Steve doesn’t answer, just continues to stroke Bucky’s hair, and they fall asleep like that, entangled, unable to tell one from the other. 

~*~

They’re finishing up a Sunday morning run, walking through Bushwick on the way home, when Steve starts to fidget. 

“Ants in your pants, doll?” He drawls, turning back to look at him. 

Steve blushes, and scratches the back of his head. “I— d’you mind?”

“Mind what?”

Steve points to his left, and Bucky turns to look at a big, fuck-off cathedral. The bells chime, and pigeons scatter from the rafters. “I know you don’t believe, and we never really talked about it,” Steve says softly, coming up beside him. “But I still got my good Irish guilt. I don’t have to stay for the whole thing, just enough for a prayer and communion, if that’s okay.” His hands flutter to find Bucky’s. He squeezes. “You can go home, I’ll meet you there.”

Bucky frowns, tracing Steve’s knuckles with his thumb. It was one part of himself he’d been happy not to revisit, one part of himself he felt completely distanced and removed from. Looking at the imposing stone building now elicits no knee-jerk reaction in him. Mostly he feels put out that he can’t eat his brunch yet, but when turns back and see’s Steve’s tentative gaze, he knows he can’t say no. It means nothing to him anymore. “No— no. Let’s go.” 

They walk in, up the stone steps and Bucky can’t help but tense at the ringing bells above them, sending crows and pigeons flying. When they open the large red doors and cool air hits them, suddenly the visceral feeling of having done this every Sunday for twenty-four years hits him. It’s like returning home. Almost. 

And then he hears it. The Priest. The devotional. “Gracious are you, o Lord…”

It’s in English. That feels inexplicably _wrong_ to him, and then the tendrils of his lost memory whisper to him; Latin. It’s supposed to be in Latin. _Dominus vobiscum._

They turn the corner, and Bucky stops. He feels queasy. The feeling of home has turned from mildly comforting into tangibly alarming, and his chest begins to tighten. The priest is _facing_ them-- the congregation. Looking them in the eye. Breaking the bread. 

“That’s how they do it now,” Steve whispers by his ear, leading him to a pew. 

_Et cum spiritu tuo._

He swallows, his throat tight. He remembers sitting in church, one a lot like this, in the back pew, Steve beside him but smaller, then. And a hundred pounds lighter. The priest was reading, from Leviticus. “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act.” He remembers looking at Steve, ducked head and cheeks red, and leaning over and whispering “Unbow your head, doll.” 

He looks at Steve, sitting there now, looking all peaceful, and despite everything, content. He feels sick to his stomach. 

_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa._

He bows his head. 

~*~

“You really didn’t have to go, y’know,” Steve says for the tenth time as they enter the apartment. “I don’t know…. If you…”

Bucky looks at him, asking without saying. 

“Well. If you still don’t believe. I didn’t know. I never wanted to ask.”

“You gonna start shooting bible verses up my ass if I don’t belive?” 

Steve barks out a laugh, dropping the keys in his basket. “Buck, you’re a lotta things, and a stubborn son of a gun is one that’s never changed. I ain’t trying to change you, or whatever you do or don’t believe anymore, but I just want to know. So I don’t make you uncomfortable.”

“It don’t bother me,” he answers, seemingly nonplussed. Steve frowns at him, seeing how thin the lie is, but not saying anything, anyway. In the midst of all the shit coming up at him, he still remembers why he loves him. It’s nice to know that hasn’t changed. 

~*~

In the middle of the night, Sarah Roger’s voice comes back to him, her hand stroking his cheek and brushing his hair from his eyes. 

“Who’s that watching over me in the dark? Who fills fire in every spark?” She sings, low and sweet. “Go tell it on the mountain, over the skies and everywhere.” Bucky’s voice now, only six years old, answering, replying. “Go tell it on the mountain to set my spirit free.”

~*~

A while later, Bucky catches Steve on his knees by his bed, hands clasped in prayer and his mother’s rosary wrapped around them. He pauses when he senses Bucky, turns to look at him. They don’t really ever speak about this, about Steve’s faith and Bucky’s lack thereof. About the vague memories Bucky has of sitting beside Steve in a high-ceiling church, the coloured light from the stained glass, shading the hallows in Steve’s cheeks all different colours; red by his cheekbones, green on his brow, honeyed yellow by his jaw. But when he reaches for the feeling, for the faith, it’s gone. It’s not so much lacking, or even a distance, it’s more an inability to fully grasp it, and understand how God’s love works when He’s put them through so much, when so much horrible and awful happens in the world. 

It’s the tangible feeling of being unheard all those nights he spent on his knees in Brooklyn when he was young and church going, staring up at the ceiling and asking, begging to have a revelation, to feel listened to. But he was so small, such a tiny dot of dust in vast infinity of space, why would God listen to him? It’s the seeing Steve there, though. Like so many years and years before, still with that same concentration, meditation on his face, and Bucky would still bet that Steve only asks for blessings for everyone else but himself. 

“Have a nice time with God,” Bucky says softly. “Put in a good word for me?”

Steve smiles softly. “Always.”

Bucky turns away, and closes the door.

~*~

A sunny Sunday in April, and Steve puts down his sketchbook and says “Y’know, I’ve been thinking.”

“Well that’s sure something new,” Bucky drawls, not looking up from his book. “Did you get a headache?”

Steve nudges him with his foot, rolling his eyes. “I came across this theory,” he begins, “that heaven was something different for everyone.” He looks at Bucky. “Do you believe in heaven. 

Bucky looks him in the eye, and tells him, “No.” He’s seen too much to believe in a paradise in the clouds. Ain’t much left of heaven but sure enough a lot of hell. That ‘if’ is too big a word for Bucky to bend his life and will to.

Steve doesn’t argue with him, doesn’t fret or weep or anything. He nods, accepts it, and moves on, easy as pie. But in his eyes, Bucky sees some kind of- sadness. Rumination. Hardness. Like his suspicions had been confirmed, that Bucky had been inexplicably robbed of something in his lack of belief. 

So there they sit, the saint and the sinner, Steve sketching and Bucky staring. Eventually, Bucky works up the courage to ask him; that if Steve had a heaven, what would it be? 

Steve kind of smiles, in that drowsy orange light, and he opens his mouth, and he tells him. 

He tells him his heaven is growing his hair long in defiance of the tight, cropped military fashion demanded of them. His heaven is his mother’s Sunday dinners and Tuesdays in the park with Bucky. It’s unlimited paper and graphite, and enough food to feed the whole world, and oranges that taste always like that very first one they ever tried after Bucky got a Christmas bonus in 1936.

He tells him, then, that all that doesn’t matter much, because really, anywhere can feel like Heaven if Bucky’s there. “Yeah yeah, laugh away Barnes,” he says, grabbing Bucky’s hand. “It’s cheesy but it’s _true_.” 

And then, Bucky stops laughing, and looks at Steve again, and pecks him on the corner of his mouth to see him blush, and tells him;

‘If’ is an awful big word to bend to, but for Steve he’d turn the tide. So if he had a heaven, the sky would be as blue as Steve’s eyes, and there’d be a whole big field of poppies red as his lips. And there’d be a post office in his little Heaven, that he could send letters to anyone he wanted. His first one would be to Steve, and it would say- 

‘Hell ain’t so bad. Take off them wings and slum it with me.’

~*~

He’d hesitated, outside. Unsure and unwilling. But some part of him remembers that this is what he was taught to do, and if anyone is going to give him answers, this would be the place to start. 

Sitting in the dark, in a claustrophobic dark, he’s starting to think that he needs to tell that part of him to shut its trap more often. “ _Pater dimitte illis non enim sciunt quid faciunt--_ Oh, shit.” Bucky grimaces. “I-- sorry. I’m sorry, father. It’s been a long time since I went to confession.”

“No, no,” a friendly voice comes from the other side of the darkened booth. “Oldschool, I like it. _Dicere._ ”

“I. Well, to be honest… I don’t know if I should be apologizing all that much.”

“Oh?”

“I think, if anything, maybe… Maybe God needs to apologise to me.”

“Why is that, my child?”

Bucky sits in the dark of the confessional booth. “I was made into a weapon,” he says quietly. “Turned against my country and the people I love the most. I lost decades.” His breath hitches. “I committed atrocities. I wish I could just not believe. I wish I could leave this whole damn thing behind. But my-- my boyfriend, he still does. But I can’t reconcile it. I can’t understand a God that would make a man as amazing Steve only to throw him in a war that was never his to fight. Or that would start that war in the first place. Hell, I want to know why I was tortured for eighty years. Why innocent people were killed. Why tyrants were allowed to rule-- why they still are. It doesn’t make sense. Steve talks about this love, and I don’t see it. I just can’t.”

The priest is quiet. Bucky breathes in, out. 

He says, “When Job was suffering, when Jesus was on the cross. They both said the same thing. And when I was where I was, I did too. They kept the faith, though. But was it worth it? To have been a faithful servant? Or would it have been better to just curse God's name from the beginning? Where was God throughout all of Job's suffering and pain? He was winning a bet with Satan. Where is he now?”

“Is this your first time coming to God, my child?”

“ _No_ ,” Bucky answers emphatically. “My whole life, for twenty-four years, I followed His rules. I studied, I believed, I practiced what I preached. I did every single thing He asked of me. I went to war for Him. Because of His will.”

“And that guarantees you… what?”

Bucky turns to scowl at the wall dividing them. “Excuse me?”

“Well, where is it written exactly that if you do this or that, that everything in your life's gonna be good, hmm? Nowhere, in any faith, is there a guarantee of that.”

“I’m not asking for everything to be good all the time,” Bucky shoots back. “I’m asking where the fairness was in turning me into a cold-blooded killer.”

“Fair? Was it fair when Isaac went blind and then his child betrayed him? And where was the fairness when Sara had to wait years before she had a child, and God said, "Sacrifice him"? And Moses couldn't even get past the bouncer to the Promised Land. And don’t forget Jesus, I mean, he got a pretty raw deal, too. Nobody in the Bible lived a life free of suffering, or injustice. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been a bestseller. And if they lived lives like that, why should ours be different?” The priest sighs. “Son, if people only believe in God when times were good, I promise you not a single person would be a believer. Faith wouldn’t be real faith if it only existed in the good times.”

“Well, so, what? The world is just cruel and random, and there's nothing anyone can do about it?” Bucky asks. “What I went through, what I did, that was all just a throw of a dice?”

The priest is quiet for a minute. “Do you mind if we skip the part where I pretend I don’t know you?”

Bucky blinks in the dark. “I-- okay.”

“Sergeant Barnes, terrible things happen everyday, by men who have sinned much more than you. Horrible things happen to those who have done less. Terrible, wonderful, devastating things. Who the hell are we to know why? So you can either believe in God, and God’s goodness, or you can believe it’s pointless and cruel and random. Whatever makes you happier. Are you?”

“Happy?” Bucky asks, hallow. It’s like his heart bends and breaks beneath the weight of it all, and he has to physically lean forward, clasping at his chest with his metal hand. His breath hitches. He remembers it all, he remembers all of them. He remembers being treated like a dog. Being frozen, being thawed, being wiped. A machine. A nothing. 

Between it all, he remembers Steve’s smile, then and now, unchanged. Remembers his feather light touch on his wrist, the graze of his lips against his jugular. He remembers his mother, he remembers Sarah, he remembers his sisters. Warm beds and tea and books. Kisses on his forehead from his father. He remembers the words-- _Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise God all ye creatures--_

He remembers all of it, and it makes no sense. The sound that he makes when he tries to verbalise it all sounds like a wounded animal. 

“Pain?” The priest asks sympathetically. “Unimaginable pain? I know the feeling. Son, God is not indifferent to our pain. Listen, the story of Jesus is a testament to the fact that the world is full of brokenness and it’s our job to put it back together again. It assumes that the world is broken, in need and in pain, and it’s our job to fix it. Remember Isaiah; Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall--”

Bucky gulps, and the words feel heavy on his tongue. But still, he speaks. “--But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

~*~

When he gets home that evening, he catches Steve saying his evening prayers. Without saying anything, Bucky takes a step forward, then another, and then is kneeling beside Steve, the words coming to roll off his tongue like they used to back in church when Steve was skinny by his side and his eyes weren’t sunk into his head with the horrors of a war he didn’t want to fight in.

Afterwards, they still in silence, until Bucky breaks it. “Do you think we’re just paying for the sins of our fathers?” 

Steve is quiet, contemplative. “Maybe. But when did blame ever do anyone any good?” 

Bucky’s shoulders drop, slightly. He breaths in, out. “An eye for an eye and the world goes blind.”

~*~

“Did I like it?” Bucky asks quietly, in the middle of the night. “Being… religious?” He rushes to explain. “ I can remember doing stuff, but the memory of the feeling is… skewed.”

Steve turns to face him, curling in. “Well, you didn’t love the early morning masses. But… I think yes, you did. You brought your bible to the war, do you remember that? You would hold mens hand and say their dying rites. I remember you would ask them if they believed in God, and when they said yes, you’d say ‘Well you ain’t got nothing to fear then, huh?’.”

Bucky hadn’t but as soon as Steve says it, he can feel the clasping of hands, the dirt on his face, the rosary digging into his palms.“Did I pray?”

“Sure. Before meals, before you went to sleep. When you were trying not to kill me for my stubbornness.”

A memory dislodges itself in Bucky’s mind. Throwing his arms up as Steve scowled at him and saying “Lord, give me arms to pray with instead of ones that hold too tightly.”

Bucky is quiet. Then he asks “And did I believe that men loving men was a sin?”

Steve is quiet. “No,” he says, softly. “But I did. And then you told me that you’d rewrite the whole damn bible if you had to, to make me believe that it was okay. And you told me, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’-- That’s Galatians, and ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.’-- That’s John. And then you said, ‘For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’”

“That’s Matthew,” Bucky says suddenly. 

“Yeah.” Steve smiles in the dark. “It is.”


End file.
